Want free Wi-Fi? If you live in these Fort Worth neighborhoods you may be in luck
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In Fort Worth’s Stop Six, unreliable internet holds back children learning virtually and parents looking for jobs.
Like many of Fort Worth’s poorer communities, residents in Stop Six often skip internet in order to put food on the table or pay utilities, said the Rev. Michael Moore, president of the Historic Stop Six Neighborhood Association. That’s troubling, he said, since vital resources like unemployment forms, job applications and school resources are accessed primarily online. The reliance on online services has been even greater during the coronavirus pandemic.
“A lot of people use their phones to get online, but that doesn’t always cut it,” Moore said. “A lot of folks can’t afford Spectrum or AT&T because that’s another bill.”
To help connect the estimated 60,000 Fort Worth residents lacking home internet access to resources like virtual classes, job applications and social services, the city has allocated $5 million of its federal CARES Act dollars to a community Wi-Fi program. The city received about $158 million in federal stimulus to help combat the coronavirus recession.
By the end of the year, people living in parts of these four neighborhoods should be able to log onto the city’s Wi-Fi network at no charge:
▪ Stop Six
▪ Ash Crescent
▪ North Side
▪ Rosemont
These are the same neighborhoods the city has targeted for improvements designed to boost safety, aesthetics and investment with part of a municipal property tax used for capital improvement projects.
When looking at the best way to tackle the internet access gap, the city wanted to consider neighborhoods with high poverty and unemployment rates as well as a diverse population, said Kevin Gunn, director of the city’s information technology department.
Because the city must spend the CARES Act dollars by the end of December and the need is greater than the funding available, Gunn said using the Neighborhood Improvement zones was the simplest way to decide where to provide Wi-Fi, but moving forward the city will include internet access in its criteria for choosing neighborhoods for targeted investment.
In Stop Six, for instance, the unemployment rate is above 20% and about 40% of households live in poverty, according to a 2017 city estimate.
The city estimates that less than 20% of the residents in those neighborhoods have internet access, or more than 8,000 households.
Some efforts have already been made to improve internet access, including a school district program that provided about 5,000 hot spots and a library program that has 300 hot spots available for check out.
“But the need is much greater than that,” Gunn said.
The idea came about when transportation director William Johnson wondered during a discussion on internet access if there was a way the city could extend the WiiFi network already available in public buildings, Gunn said.
To do that, the city will spend about $2 million of the CARES Act allocation on equipment that will blanket the neighborhoods with a Wi-Fi signal. Wi-Fi from a city building, like a community center, will be relayed to receivers on streetlights, traffic signals or other utilities, which will then cast the signal into the surrounding area.
Anyone with a Wi-Fi-capable devise can access the signal and browse, with some limitations. Gunn said streaming and gaming services as well as some other sites may be blocked.
About $946,000 will be used for contract services to install the equipment. The remaining $2.1 million has been set aside either for contingency or to use in the next neighborhood targeted for investment.
Moore celebrated the program as “fantastic.”
Stop Six has a large number of young families with children, who may fall behind on school work if they’re not attending class in-person, he said. There’s also an aging population looking for social services and a high number of job seekers.
The neighborhood is also home to the Cavile Place, a former public housing complex that is being redeveloped into a mixed income neighborhood. The project, a partnership between the Fort Worth Housing Solutions, a private developer and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, will bring new energy and new people into Stop Six, increasing the need for Internet access, Moore said.
“I wish this had been done yesterday,” he said.
During a City Council discussion on the program, Councilwoman Kelly Allen Gray, who represents the Asch Crescent area, said improving Internet access had long been talked about, but the city lacked resources. Leveraging the CARES Act money to get it started was a bright spot in the pandemic.
“While COVID has been a wreck, some really great things have come out of this,” she said.
Fernando Peralta Berrios, president of the Las Familias de Rosemont Neighborhood Association, said he’s been concerned about Internet access for awhile.
Like Stop Six, Rosemont has a blend of older and younger families who can take advantage of the city’s WiFi for job applications and school. But the neighborhood south of Shaw Clarke and Ryan Place has been attractive to immigrant families. In addition to employment and school resources, these families need access to immigration attorneys and related services, Berrios said.
“Some people forget internet is a luxury, and it’s not something everyone just has,” he said.
This story was originally published October 26, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
